Have you ever read the first book in a series and thought, wow, this is pretty sweet...then you pick up the next one and it sucks? Well, that happened to me. I read Dune, by Frank Herbert and according to the cover of the book, it is one of the all time greatest sci-fi novels ever written. So I think, okay, I'll give it a whirl.
The story is set 10,000 years in the future, so there is intergalaxy travel, force fields to protect those inside and deciet around every corner. It's about a royal family, the Atreides, who are going to take over control of another planet, Arrakis whose sole planetary output is a spice that allows the person who eats it to have a prescience and see into the future. The spice is the most valuable commodity in the entire known galaxy. The current royal family in control of Arrakis, the Harkonnens are the archenemy of the Atreides. So we've established our good and bad guys.
Now our good and bad guys are both trying to stay on the good side of the emperor and remain an important contributor to the galactic economy. The spice that is a product of the planet Arrakis is imperative to the guys in charge of the interplanetary transportation, the Guildsmen, to safely navigate from one galaxy to the next. Without it the trade between planets would cease to exist and chaos would ensue.
The story unfolds with our good guys ending up on the short end of the stick and how they fight back and overthrow the bad guys. I enjoyed how the main character matured and grew into his role. I also liked how the author switched between different points of view on the fly between characters within a scene, allowing the reader to understand each characters perspective as the story played out.
However, I'm certainly not on board with the rest of the readers who think that it is a masterpiece and most likely the best sci-fi book of our time. It was an interesting story, but it just didn't pop for me.
So I pick up the next one in the series thinking I'll get a glimpse into the story arc that the author has created (there are 6 books by the original author, then a bunch more by his son) and follow the adventure. Turns out that I can't take it any more. I realize now one of the aspects of the author that really annoyed me was his failure to get to the meat of the story and send our cast of characters on their adventure. It wasn't so bad in Dune, but in Dune Messiah the author seems be taking his sweet ass time establishing the adventure.
Combine that with the fact that I found a used bookstore and bought 10 used books for 5 dollars, my patience and desire to stick to the story and carry on with the adventure bottomed out. I moved on to The Silence of the Lambs. Much more interesting. I've seen the movie, so I know what's going to happen, but as always, the book is better.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
I just found out that my mom is on facebook. That almost ruins it for me....and the wife agrees.
If you found out your mom was on facebook, how would you feel?
A. ruin it for you
B. yea - another friend to keep up with
C. indifference
I keep flip flopping between A and C.
If you found out your mom was on facebook, how would you feel?
A. ruin it for you
B. yea - another friend to keep up with
C. indifference
I keep flip flopping between A and C.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Dune
I finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert this past week. You wouldn't like it, it's science fiction. But there was a movie based on the book made back in the 80's with Sting and the soundtrack is by Toto, so you know that's going to be awesome!
I can't stay off of facebook or wikipedia long enough to put down something to make this post interesting!!!
I can't stay off of facebook or wikipedia long enough to put down something to make this post interesting!!!
Friday, January 2, 2009
college textbooks
I just posted a couple of semesters worth of college textbooks that Amanda and I have been hauling around these 8 and 6 years, respectively, since undergrad, online to try and sell them. Some of them I still have the pricetags still on them, $75, $85, $65, ridiculously inflated prices. It is woefully disgusting how much money they cost us, and how useless they are to me now.
It makes me wish I wasn't so damn anal retentive when I was in school. I was one of those college kids who blindly went into the bookstore and bought what was recommended for the course. In hindsight that wasn't too bright.
Another good idea would have been to see if the professor even used the stinking $70 dollar textbook for the class! I made that mistake a couple of times.
It would have been smart to sell some of them back at the end of the semester. There were some I could have, some I knew I should keep and others that were in between. What would have been smart was if I sold them back when I graduated, by that time I had a good idea of what I found useful and useless. And which fields I wanted to get a job in --meaning which books I could unload back to the bookstore.
Flipping through some of them actually brought back sharp memories of aggravation, frustration, success and horrid disgust. Infinitesimal analysis *shudder*.
It makes me wish I wasn't so damn anal retentive when I was in school. I was one of those college kids who blindly went into the bookstore and bought what was recommended for the course. In hindsight that wasn't too bright.
Another good idea would have been to see if the professor even used the stinking $70 dollar textbook for the class! I made that mistake a couple of times.
It would have been smart to sell some of them back at the end of the semester. There were some I could have, some I knew I should keep and others that were in between. What would have been smart was if I sold them back when I graduated, by that time I had a good idea of what I found useful and useless. And which fields I wanted to get a job in --meaning which books I could unload back to the bookstore.
Flipping through some of them actually brought back sharp memories of aggravation, frustration, success and horrid disgust. Infinitesimal analysis *shudder*.
my kindhearted wife
Yesterday, Amanda, Xander and I were driving and I asked her what the speed limit was as we coincidentally passed some roadkill.
"Fast enough to kill a cat" she replied.
"Ha".
Then she says "...but slow enough to give it hope."
That kept all of us laughing for the next mile. That's something funny about our kid too, if we laugh he just starts laughing.
"Fast enough to kill a cat" she replied.
"Ha".
Then she says "...but slow enough to give it hope."
That kept all of us laughing for the next mile. That's something funny about our kid too, if we laugh he just starts laughing.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
book review...
Lately I've been fiddling around trying to read different genres of book and it hasn't been going as well as I'd hoped. In an effort to read something intelligent, I picked up a copy of The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio. It is about the number phi, 1.6180339887...; which is expressed more precisely as the ratio of the diagonal of a pentagram to its side. This number is often referred to as the golden ratio, or the golden number because it often appears in plants, artwork, poetry, architecture and music (and in geometry it's called the golden angle). It has been studied by many and has some very interesting properties.
What I thought was interesting about the book was the author discusses how we as people understood the concept of counting higher than the number of fingers we have. Have you ever though about how cavemen went about bartering antelope meat for lima beans? One antelope carcass has got to be worth a whole horde of lima beans, but how does Iggy (the hunter) tell Narg (the gardener) that he owes him 20 meals of beans for his one killed antelope. Well, it seems that there were some archeologists that found a baboon thigh bone from 10,000+ years ago that had notches on it. So I would guess that Iggy just notched his bone for every meal of beans he recieved from Narg.
Something else that I found interesting is how we ended up with 60 seconds as our time base when we have a base 10 numbering system. The author explained that way back when, different cultures had different numbering systems. And as one culture was overrun by another the numbering systems were adopted, meshed or thrown out.
One other common theme of this book is the Fibonacci sequence and how the sequence approaches the golden ratio as the sequence approaches infinity. The Fionacci sequence is this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 39, ... and is achieved by taking the previous two numbers in the sequence and adding them (1+1=2, 2+3=5, and so on). What is neat about this sequence is how it appears in nature as well. It is called phyllotaxis and it is when plant leaves or flower petals arrange themselves in this manner. This appears in the pineapples, sunflowers and roses. In some plants it also describes the arrangement of branches on a tree in relation to the trunk. Very neat.
There are also some very cool mathmatical examples which were shown in the book, like how Fibonacci numbers are related to Pythagorean triples. For example, if you take any four consecutive Fibonacci numbers, such as 1, 2, 3 and 5;
The product of the outer numbers 1x5=5,
twice the product of the inner terms 2x2x3=12, and
the sum of the squares of the inner terms 2^2+3^2=13...
gives the 3 legs to a Pythangorean triple. Also, note that the third number, 13 is a Fibonacci number. Pretty sweet, huh!
So I was able to find some gems in the dry roughage of this book. I really found it boring how he presented arguements concerning plagerism of certain mathematicians of the 1600's. And the chapters on poetry and music I skimmed them (that's being generous). But will admit that I would pick up another book by this author if I had the chance.
What I thought was interesting about the book was the author discusses how we as people understood the concept of counting higher than the number of fingers we have. Have you ever though about how cavemen went about bartering antelope meat for lima beans? One antelope carcass has got to be worth a whole horde of lima beans, but how does Iggy (the hunter) tell Narg (the gardener) that he owes him 20 meals of beans for his one killed antelope. Well, it seems that there were some archeologists that found a baboon thigh bone from 10,000+ years ago that had notches on it. So I would guess that Iggy just notched his bone for every meal of beans he recieved from Narg.
Something else that I found interesting is how we ended up with 60 seconds as our time base when we have a base 10 numbering system. The author explained that way back when, different cultures had different numbering systems. And as one culture was overrun by another the numbering systems were adopted, meshed or thrown out.
One other common theme of this book is the Fibonacci sequence and how the sequence approaches the golden ratio as the sequence approaches infinity. The Fionacci sequence is this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 39, ... and is achieved by taking the previous two numbers in the sequence and adding them (1+1=2, 2+3=5, and so on). What is neat about this sequence is how it appears in nature as well. It is called phyllotaxis and it is when plant leaves or flower petals arrange themselves in this manner. This appears in the pineapples, sunflowers and roses. In some plants it also describes the arrangement of branches on a tree in relation to the trunk. Very neat.
There are also some very cool mathmatical examples which were shown in the book, like how Fibonacci numbers are related to Pythagorean triples. For example, if you take any four consecutive Fibonacci numbers, such as 1, 2, 3 and 5;
The product of the outer numbers 1x5=5,
twice the product of the inner terms 2x2x3=12, and
the sum of the squares of the inner terms 2^2+3^2=13...
gives the 3 legs to a Pythangorean triple. Also, note that the third number, 13 is a Fibonacci number. Pretty sweet, huh!
So I was able to find some gems in the dry roughage of this book. I really found it boring how he presented arguements concerning plagerism of certain mathematicians of the 1600's. And the chapters on poetry and music I skimmed them (that's being generous). But will admit that I would pick up another book by this author if I had the chance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
